Lessons from Mr. Rogers Neighborhood
It’s always interesting to see what search terms bring people here. It’s especially interesting to see what seems to be a hopeful trend towards compassion and unity in the face of tragedy. More often the conversations these national sorrows evoke are less vitriolic and more deeply soul searching – as they should be if we are to change our culture to one that embraces justice, equity and compassion at all levels of human society, and abhors and rejects violence.
The most popular search terms since yesterday? “Darkness cannot drive out darkness” and “Fred Rogers helpers.” I spoke yesterday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s quote. We’ve visited with Fred Rogers here before, too, the benevolent children’s program host who shared “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” with legions of children for over 35 years.
The reference to “Fred Rogers helpers” stems from a story he once shared: “My mother would say to me,’Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers—so many caring people in this world.”
When Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, Fred Rogers produced a prime time special to help parents cope with the tragedy and with what he thought, at the time, was awful media sensationalism, in an effort to give families ways to talk with their children about tragic events in the news.
“I’ve been terribly concerned about the graphic display of violence which the mass media has been showing recently,” he says in the piece. ” And I plead for your protection, and support of your young children. There is just so much that a very young child can take without its being overwhelming to him. I’ve been very frankly quite concerned about it. … The best thing in the world is for your children to be included in your family ways of coping with the problems that present themselves at any time, but particularly now in this very difficult time in our nation. “
He shares gentle coping suggestions in the video, and in fact, his guidance is still well regarded and highly recommended today, 45 years later. ”Helping Children Deal with Tragic Events in the News,” is as timely as it is unfortunate that it remains timely.
“I’m really grateful to be able to work with you,” he says in the video. ” And I feel it really is work together, you know, in caring for our children.“
You know it is, really, and we need to keep working together to care for our children and each other in kind, compassionate ways, now and forever more.
Say it Again: Only Light Can Drive Out Darkness
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes… Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967) . “Where Do We Go From Here?“
In the wake of today’s Boston Marathon violence, in the wake of Sandy Hook, in the wake of media sensationalism that substitutes the volume of voyeurism for the true substance of serious social commentary and real solutions, this cannot be said enough:
Only Light Can Drive Out Darkness.
The Things That Matter: Fishing for a Real Future
My day job involves working for an organization whose mission is: “To transform our culture by creating a world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology leaders.”
Those are the words and vision of inventor Dean Kamen, founder of the U.S. Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, better known as FIRST. FIRST engages kids in elementary through high school grades in competitive robotics competitions that provide youth with opportunities to work with professional mentors and learn science, math and engineering skills in fun, enduring and rewarding ways, with over $16 million in scholarships for participating high schoolers.
“The assumption that drove the creation of FIRST, “ Kamen said in an interview with PTC last year, “ was
you get what you celebrate in a free culture, and the reason America was slipping compared to a lot of its peers around the world—particularly in kids getting involved with and mastering science and technology—was not bad teachers or bad schools, it wasn’t what we don’t have. It was the fact that as a rich country we have so many distractions that have created for kids role models that prevent them from working hard at things that matter.”
In the last few weeks, I was so immersed in working with students , their mentors and the local business community supporting kids in “working hard at the things that matter,” that I almost missed an equally important debate on things that matter to us here in Tampa Bay involving a big box retailer and the substantive public tax payer incentive that county officials want to give the store to open shop in our community.
Site of “The Estuary” shopping plaza
The Tampa Bay Times reports that the Hillsborough County Commission is considering contributing $6.25 million (down from $15 million, initially) toward road improvements around “The Estuary”, an enormous, ironically named shopping plaza planned between Falkenburg Road and Interstate 75 – currently the site of Florida pine scrub, and a good 15 miles inland from any chance of an “estuary”, which is by definition a partially enclosed body of coastal water where freshwater from rivers and streams meets and mixes with salt water from the ocean and actually does something physically, biologically, environmentally and even economically useful, by virtue of the recreational opportunities our coastline offers.
A real estuary
Besides the sad fact that “The Estuary” shopping center is going to completely destroy anything remotely natural – estuarian or otherwise – in the area of planned development, developers predictions of “ annual sales of $61.8 million, generating state and local sales taxes” and “property assessment climbing to $16.4 million, boosting taxes on land now used for agriculture” ring hollow in light of the facts, and misleading in light of “things that matter.”
Bass Pro’s track record and the history of big tax incentives for major retailers suggest assurances that “ Hillsborough could break even on its $15 million investment by 2018” are probably more than a little inflated. More important, though: Do we truly believe that subsidized shopping offers a real return on our investment towards our collective future?
Bass Pro projects it would create 369 permanent, full-time jobs in addition to 1,517 temporary construction jobs over five years, and the entire shopping plaza development is project to create 1,327 retail jobs.
But the fact is, says a report by the Public Accountability Initiative that examined such claims (Fishing for Taxpayer Cash), “Bass Pro often fails to deliver on its promises as an economic development anchor and major tourist destination – promises which were used to reel in government subsidies. Its stores successfully attract shoppers, but often do not produce sought-after economic benefits associated with major tourist destinations,” and taxpayers in places like Cincinnati, Harrisburg PA, and Bakersfield, CA “ have been left with high levels of debt and fiscal stress as a result of Bass Pro Projects.”
“Retail is not economic development. People don’t suddenly have more money to spend on hip waders because a new Bass Pro or Cabela’s comes to town,” Greg Leroy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a non-partisan economic development watchdog group based in Washington, D.C., told The Atlantic Cities in an article last summer . ”All that happens is that money spent at local mom and pop retailers shifts to these big box retailers. When government gives these big box stores tax dollars, they are effectively picking who the winners and losers are going to be.”
Larry Whitely, a spokesman for Bass Pro Shops, argued in the article that their stores “should be viewed as an amenity being added to a community — much like one might view a park or a library. …”These aren’t just stores – they are natural history museums. Every store is designed to reflect the unique natural environment of the area in which it is located.” “
Aside, again, from the basic fact that the store, by virtue of its construction, would be destroying a unique natural environment in the area in which it is to be located, $6.5 million would buy a lovely real natural history museum , park or library with a far greater return on the investment, socially, aesthetically, academically, environmentally and economically. $6.5 million dollars could also address food insecurity, make a serious impact on homelessness, pay for new teachers, finance school improvements, or make a nice deposit on a light rail system.
From a purely personal perspective, $6.5 million could fund a couple or three FIRST robotics STEM education robotics teams in every one of Hillsborough County’s nearly 160 K-12 schools for years, helping create the type of scientifically literate people Florida needs for a truly economically successful future. Because the real path to future prosperity in Florida and nationally, economic development experts are saying, is growing a knowledge based economy,not a consumer based one.
A knowledge based economy is one that is “driven by research, ideas, innovations, and technical skills to generate high-impact economic benefits and high-wage jobs. Strong sustainable knowledge economies
- Are able to sell goods and services at a higher profit margin than others;
- Earn average wages up to $25,000 more than non-knowledge-based communities, and;
- Are able to perform and execute business through more cost-effective and efficient relationships.
In the “New Economy Index” report of states by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which evaluates states on a similar “knowledge based” formula, Florida ranked 21st – and dropping.
“Some have argued that, given the economic downturn, now is not the time to focus on innovation,” 
observed the report’s authors. “rather, our chief concern should be job creation. Yet, fostering innovation and creating jobs are by no means mutually exclusive. To the contrary, most studies of the issue have found that innovation is positively correlated to job growth in the mid- to long-term.”
By a correlation factor of 0.87, notes one author – ” in fact exponentially proportional to KEI (Knowledge Economic Indicator) , ie higher the KEI, higher is the per capita income of that country and vice versa. Highest KEI is of Denmark at 9.58 on a scale of 1 to 10, and the lowest KEI is of Myanmar at 0.96 at rank 145.” (Express Tribune-)
Among the key findings in Change the Equation’s Florida Vital Signs report, “Florida needs a world class education system and seamless talent supply chain to meet workforce demands at all skill levels. STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – is of the utmost priority if Florida is to achieve its long term goal.”
Nowhere in that report is there a call for more consumer opportunities or retail jobs.
“Before handing taxpayer money to Bass Pro projects, ” concludes the Public Accountability Initiative report, ” public officials should consider what some other cities are going through as a result of Bass Pro-anchored projects that have fallen short: high levels of debt and fiscal duress, lackluster development, vacancy and blight, and lower-than-expected tax revenues. Considering the potential consequences, it is imperative for public officials and taxpayers to take the proper steps to ensure that they are not subsidizing an underperforming development: ask straightforward questions of Bass Pro and project developers, demand transparency and data, secure contractual guarantees that limit cannibalization, and, above all, consider alternatives. There is no good reason to subsidize development that sells cities short and leaves taxpayers on the hook.”
Public officials – and the public – should also consider what really matters to Florida’s future and help us build a Knowledge economy that will serve us and future generations far better, and make us far more productive and competitive than any retail chain store ever will. If, as Dean Kamen says, and as I fully agree, we get what we celebrate, and the best we can do is Bass Pro Shops , then that’s all we’ll get.
If, however, we choose to celebrate creative productivity and scientific and technical literacy and achievement, we’ll get so much more than we could ever have imagined!
Make 2013 a Love Note!
Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. ~Hal Borland
Of all the images I captured this year – sweeping Alaskan vistas, Ozark valleys, majestic marshes, beautiful animals and amazing skyscapes – it is this goofy but joyful family portrait that seems to both sweetly sum up the past year, and to beautifully illustrate my hopes for the new one. Everyone in the photo has suffered some hardship or loss over the past year: the passing of close loved ones, the loss of jobs, accidents, and health problems. And still we dance.
In the wonderful poem, “What If” , by Ganga White, Director of the White Lotus Foundation yoga center in California, White asks:
What if our religion was each other?
If our practice was our life?
If prayer was our words?
What if the Temple was the Earth?
If forests were our church?
If holy water—the rivers, lakes and oceans?
What if meditation was our relationships?
If the Teacher was life?
If wisdom was self-knowledge?
If love was the center of our being
Think about it: What if your life really was your worship? Regardless of what you believe or don’t believe , what if each day was treated as holy and sacred in the Temple of Earth? What if your life was one big Love Note? Consider how you would live then, and you will have your way forward into a future where the only resolution you need is the resolve to live in joy, compassion and thanks giving.
Wishing you a New Year rich with opportunities for good choices, and thoughtful and intentional ways of being, and wishing all of us the strength of our convictions to help create a world in which love, reverence, and gratitude are central to our lives.
Happy New Year. Look after each other.
An Evergreen Discussion at Spirit of Life UU, December 30th
On Sunday, December 30th, I’ll be speaking at Spirit of Life Unitarian Universalists, on the topic of “Living GREEN.”
It’s a topic near and dear to my heart: What choices can we make in the course of our day to day living to leave a smaller ecological footprint on the world, while leaving a bigger, more socially meaningful one?
I believe “Living Green” is nothing more and nothing less than living with intentionality. I’m the first to admit I fall far short of the lofty noble goals of the eco-friendly lifestyle, but like any worthwhile effort, the journey is as important as the destination.
At the surface, living an ecologically sustainable lifestyle may look principally to be about conscious consumerism. But at heart, it’s about understanding that everything we do – from what we buy to what we eat, to what we say and how we act – affects everything else.
In the Unitarian Universalist tradition, we call that the “Interdependent web” , at the heart of our 7th Principle: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. – and at the heart of what I love about my chosen faith, that it so richly, creatively and meaningfully recognizes that we are all connected.
Or, as Walt Whitman put it: “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you…” In this capacity, “living green” becomes more than an ecologically conscious lifestyle: It becomes a socially conscious one, one that recognizes our responsibility to care for one another, as well as our environment, and that nurturing one nurtures the other.
Join me, Sunday, December 30th, at Spirit of Life UU, at 18412 Burrell Road in Odessa, FL, at 11 am to consider a fresh, Green start to your New Year.
Mark Price and the Power of Turning off the News
“The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they’re genuine. –Abraham Lincoln” (Unknown internet source)
It started over the weekend, the deluge of various and sundry well-meaning, sweetly captioned photos and thoughtful public sentiments by a variety of sentimental public figures, including the usually eloquent Morgan Freeman, whose “brilliant take on what happened” in Connecticut flooded Facebook and in-boxes. What jumped out at me initially was the puzzling opening sentence fragment asking a question but lacking a question mark: ”You want to know why.”
Why what? I wondered, but read on…
“This may sound cynical, but here’s why.
“It’s because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he’ll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.
“CNN’s article says that if the body count “holds up”, this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer’s face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer’s identity? None that I’ve seen yet. Because they don’t sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you’ve just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.
“You can help by forgetting you ever read this man’s name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news.“”
On Facebook, several supportive “likers” also added “RIP Morgan Freeman,” adding another puzzling element to the whole thing because 1) Morgan Freeman isn’t dead and 2) if it was believed that he was, in fact,dead, why would he be commenting on the Connecticut shooting?
It was, of course, no surprise that this was yet something else that a famous person didn’t actually say. These are the sentiments of a Vancouver fellow named Mark Price, a script writer by trade, whose comments were pranked by 
Reddit user Quintilian751, who said, “ Couple of us thought it’d be funny, since it was a well written article, to attribute it to Morgan Freeman.”
The rest is the stuff of Internet virality.
“I honestly wish my brush with Internet fame wasn’t associated with murdered children,” the Vancouver Sun report Price wrote. ” If what I said resonated with thousands of people, despite who they believe said it, GOOD. I stand by what I said about why it happened, and how it was reported!
“...If it weren’t given to a celebrity, nobody would be talking about it. What got people to spread my words: The content of the message, or who supposedly said it?””
Price has got a powerful point here, and I’m perfectly happy to give him full credit for it because it really was the content of the message that caught my eye, and not who supposedly said it. And I truly believe, when you get right down to it, “turning off the news” might be the best thing we can do to regain our humanity and stop the madness.
Joel Gascoigne , founder of social media sharing app, Buffer, made a conscious decision two years ago to stop reading and watching mainstream media.
“And it just so happens, ” he observes in his blog post, “The Power of Ignoring Mainstream Media, ” that the last 2 years have also been the most enjoyable and productive of my entire life, and have contained some of my greatest achievements.”
Gascoigne notes that about 95% of mainstream news is negative, even though in reality, 95% of life is not.
“Mainstream news report about wars, natural disasters, murders and other kinds of suffering. It seems the only natural conclusion of watching or reading mainstream news is that the world is a terrible place, and that it is getting worse every day. However, the reality of course is the complete opposite: we live in an amazing time and the human race is improving at a faster pace than ever before.”
Sandy Hook Elementary will always stand out as one of the saddest periods in American history, and nothing should diminish the sorrow and loss and the commensurate necessary social dialog that is taking place.
But it is not the only period in American history, and if it’s a hallmark of anything, perhaps it is that it’s time to turn off the TV, especially mainstream news, and tune into one another and the bigger picture of the world in which we really live, a world in which we ARE better than this.
Trip the Light
When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That is my religion. -Abraham Lincoln, as quoted by Matt.
If you’re a fan of “Where the Hell is Matt?“, you’ll especially appreciate the message of this video that we are more alike than we are different. . If you’ve never heard of Matt, who started on the road to Internet fame as “a 36-year-old deadbeat from Westport, Connecticut who used to think that all he ever wanted to do in life was make and play videogames,” visit his website to learn more.
The long and the short of it, though, is that “Matt thinks travel is important. It helps us learn what we’re capable of, that the path laid in front of us isn’t the only one we can choose, and that we don’t need to be so afraid of each other all the time.
“Matt used to think you were either good at something or bad at something and there wasn’t much you could do to change it. He wishes he’d learned sooner that you can get better at most things just by doing them over and over again. It really is that simple.”
Live in Joy. We need more of it.
“Only Light Can Drive Out Darkness” Redux
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence, you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that. – Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community? p. 62
On May 2, 2011, on the day of Osama Bin Laden’s death, I visited an inadvertently viral misquotation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s, “Returning hate for hate multiples hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.”
That post to this day continues to generate more views than any other, with the search terms, “Returning hate for hate multiples hate” the most recurrent search term bringing readers here by the hundreds, more than a year later.
This is just a tiny microcosm, I know, of people searching for answers, looking for a way out of the darkness.
But WE are the way out of the darkness. We are the light we’re looking for.
Fred Rogers said his mother told him to “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” They were abundantly visible yesterday, and continue to be, in Connecticut and wherever there is need.
In the debates and arguments that loom in the coming days, that are already taking place – on gun control, on mental health, on security – we have more opportunities to be the helpers, that critical light in the darkness, by refusing to become polarized, so entrenched in the rhetoric of extremes that we’re unable to find our way through mature dialog to real solutions.
You can believe in the Second Amendment without interpreting it to mean guns for everyone without rules for anyone.
You can be in favor of responsible gun ownership, but also in favor of sanity and keeping the world as safe as we possibly can.
You can support reasonable restrictions on guns without being against God and country. - -Sue Carlton, Tampa Bay Times
Rev. Peter Morales, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, my chosen faith, calls on us to “reflect humbly and work to change the conditions that allow such violence to take place.”
We must work, he says,to create a society “ where differences are resolved without violence, where the mentally unstable do not have ready access to lethal force, where violence is not glorified...”
Creating a society where violence is not glorified.
To me, that means doing my part to take the high road in difficult and potentially volatile discussions; it means stepping in gently but without moralizing to redirect conflict whenever reasonable and possible; it means speaking up with a different view when I hear young people – and older ones – joking about or glorifying violence; it means taking an active part in discussions in my community and sharing my views with local media over sensational news coverage of important events, and with my congressional representatives with firm insistence that they look beyond personal political gain to the serving the Greater Good to which they are pledged.
Nothing will change unless we, as a people, as a culture, stop being the silent majority for common sense and compassion, and start actively building the safe and sane nation in which we want to live.
Speak loudly, but put down the big stick, and raise your candle higher.
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- Life through the Lens
